Bio-LOOP - Chemical Looping for efficient biomass utilisation

Biomass utilisation provides nowadays the opportunity of a CO2 neutral production of energy (heat, power, fuels) and chemicals. Besides, as recently remarked by several international institutions, negative emission technologies (NET) based on bioenergy are required in order to achieve globally net CO2-emissions close to zero, which is mandatory to limit the consequences of global warming. Chemical looping (CL) is a very promising technology for the thermal conversion of hydrocarbons with a metal-oxide as oxygen carrier instead of air, which implies a nitrogen-free exhaust gas stream with the possibility of an efficient and cheap CO2 capture. Consequently, considering the low Energy. penalty for CO2 capture, CL is deemed as one of the most promising carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. It can be applied for the production of: heat and power (CHP) with chemical looping combustion (CLC); highly pure hydrogen with chemical looping hydrogen (CLH) for e-mobility applications or power production with fuel cells; syngas with chemical looping reforming (CLR), for further utilisation in CHP plants or for downstream processing to chemicals and fuels. Looping systems with CO2-neutral biomass as a feedstock can be the basis for the development of NET with a huge market potential, considerably increasing the attractiveness of biomass utilisation.